The Originals: Black Beauty - Om Books

"If a thing is right, it can be done, and if it is wrong, it can be done without; and a good man will find a way. Black Beauty, a young colt, is raised with love and care by his benevolent master, Farmer Grey. Once he grows up to be a handsome stallion, due to a cruel twist of fate, his master is forced to sell him. Leaving his carefree days on an English farm behind, Black Beauty soon finds himself in the hands of several ruthless owners and carriage drivers in London. Battling the bitterness of his masters, he yearns to return to the freedom and comforts of his country life. Black Beauty, the autobiography of a horse, was written during the last seven years of Anna Sewell’s life. A testimony to her outrage against the ill-treatment of horses in Victorian England and her empathy for animals, it remains an evergreen classic!"


Born on 30 March 1820 in Norfolk, England, Anna Sewell wrote only one book—Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse that was published in November 1877. Little did she know that it would become one of the bestselling and most loved classics of all time. From an early age, Anna Sewell assisted her mother, Mary Wright Sewell, a well-known author of children’s books, in editing her manuscripts. For lack of means and fortune, she was home-schooled.
At 14, she slipped and gravely injured her ankles. Following this mishap, she spent most of her life confined to her home, and her mobility depended only on horsedrawn carriages. A fictional autobiography of a high-bred horse, Black Beauty was not just a novel for children. Anna Sewell’s intent behind writing the book was, ‘to induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses’. The use of anthropomorphism as a literary device in Black Beauty stems from her love of horses and her deep resentment against the ill-treatment of animals. Anna Sewell never married. She died in 1878, five months after Black Beauty was published.